Saturday, December 1, 2012

November Monthly Summary




During the month of November, the focus was on the syllabus evaluation and the project demonstration.  It is wonderful to see the light at the end of the tunnel and know that our projects are coming to completion.  I feel a great sense of accomplishment having completed all the steps in this process.  It has certainly been an interesting experience. 

I believe the syllabus evaluation was one of my favorite assignments in our project.  To evaluate my syllabus, I chose two individuals with much expertise.  The first person was a National Dean with years experience in the education world.  She had a great understanding of what a syllabus should look like as well as which components to include and which to leave out.  I relied on her expertise to guide the basic look, flow, and feel of my syllabus.  My second evaluator was an expert in the field of medical assisting holding certification and many years of education and experience both in the field as well as teaching.  I relied on her expertise to ensure that I included the important objectives and health science related learning outcomes.  I am not an expert in the medical field so I really needed to include analysis from an expert.  I was thrilled to find out that both of my evaluators were very impressed with my syllabus design.  They did have some great feedback and suggestions for improvement as well.  Most of their comments are things I will add or change about my syllabus.
I found the most challenging aspect of the syllabus design was my lack of knowledge in the medical field.  I chose a medical program because I saw a need to improve a program of study.  However, I didn’t realize how much effort I would need to put in to study the field and truly understand the clinical competencies needed and required for this field.  It paid off in the long run because I believe I have a much greater understanding of situated cognition and how it can relate to the medical assisting classroom and adult learning.
The project demonstration was very interesting to complete as well.  It is nice to see a comprehensive demonstration of all these assignments we have been working on up to this point.  The project demonstration really pulls everything together and puts the finishing touches on what we have learned through the course and the process we have gone through to get there.  It has been a great course overall and I appreciate the many time we have been able to incorporate application in our projects, assignments, and discussion boards.

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad you were able to find appropriate evaluators for your syllabus and that they were impressed with it! It's hard to be sure that you understand something enough to move forward with it, but it looks like you did a great job. Congrats!

    --Ben England

    ReplyDelete
  2. Angela,

    As Ben stated and after reading you evaluations, it definitely did seem very helpful to have evaluations from true professionals in the field related to your project. I agree that it can be difficult to create a program (even a hypothetical) when you are not truly an except. I guess I sometimes have underestimated the knowledge and expertise that some of my professors have had in the past. I also have to agree with you that the evaluation assignment was one of my favorites. It was nice to interact with other professionals, receive feedback, and reflection on ways that we could improve. Thanks for sharing!

    Alonna Koch

    ReplyDelete